


perfect nothing

by TrainRush



Series: Donut Hole AU [1]
Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: ...Somewhat?, ...implied, Angst, Gen, Memory Loss, Recovered Memories, confronting your lost friend in the middle of an odd dreamscape: the fic, seriously i have no clue how to tag this, sorry if this looks incoherent i genuinely don’t know for this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29356374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrainRush/pseuds/TrainRush
Summary: DAY 12: “who are you?”every timeperfect nothing—(or, alternatively, the Conductor confronts the stranger in his memories in a dream.)
Series: Donut Hole AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2156415
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	perfect nothing

**Author's Note:**

> hihi! i’d like to preface this with a bit of context for the au this oneshot centers around :) below is a synopsis of the base concept!
> 
> _ The AU begins when Hat Kid is defeated by DJ Grooves in the final phase of the Battle of Award 42. Facing the crowd of onlooking moon penguins, he smashes the Time Piece… and promptly disappears from their universe, breaking his promise to win back all the awards. What he leaves behind is an extremely unstable Time Rift — the last thing keeping him tethered to their universe. No one knows where he went. Hat Kid slowly recovers from her injuries with the help of the Conductor, but she is not quick enough to stop the Time Rift from collapsing and dooming their universe. _
> 
> _ When the Time Rift collapses and their universe becomes void, Hat Kid and the Conductor both wake up in an alternate timeline in which DJ Grooves never existed. They do not remember anything of the timeline they left. This alternate universe is simply their reality, and they believe it always has been.  _
> 
> _ However, a day or two after (unknowingly) waking up in this alternate timeline, large, blurry memories of the Conductor’s begin to resurface inexplicably. Common among them all is a single person, yet he can’t quite place who it is. Every attempt to piece together the puzzle pulls a blank — it’s almost as if there’s an empty hole everywhere they appear. He is only able to draw a single conclusion: there should be an extra bird in his studio, but he can’t quite prove they were ever there to begin with. _
> 
> i hope that makes enough sense :flushed:
> 
> will i write out the story of the full au? i intend to, actually! when, though, i’m unsure, so stay tuned i suppose :)
> 
> in the meantime, take this as a sort of “sneak peak” of what’s to come :)

The Conductor opened his eyes to the sight of a blank white void.

He was asleep. He couldn’t explain it, but he somehow knew that he was. Was he in a dream? But people typically didn’t know that they were dreaming when they were. Was he — he paused to remember the term — lucid dreaming? But nothing in the strange place he had ended up in appeared dream-like. Not even whatsoever.

Where was he?

Nervously, the Conductor began to look around. He was in his typical day attire, with his blazer, collared white shirt, and tie, despite having gone to sleep in pyjamas. The ground he stepped on felt nonexistent, but it didn’t feel like he was falling, either. The feeling was strange. He didn’t enjoy it even one bit.

The void was completely empty. It almost felt like he was in a room of some kind; perhaps a dome-shaped room with white walls all around. They were bright, but somehow, they didn’t blind him.

As he looked around, the Conductor felt a strong feeling of unease overtake him. _Where the peck was he?_ Terrified, he cried out at last.

“Hello?”

His voice echoed infinitely in the void. It only completely faded away after what felt like a whole minute. He looked up, and then down, unsure of what to do.

Then the void seemed to dim, becoming a light grey. The Conductor felt a sudden cold shiver run down his spine, and he froze in place where he was. There was a shuffle from behind him. It echoed in the void just as his voice had only a few moments ago. Its presence somehow felt both ominous and inviting. It urged him to turn around. To face it.

And so he did. Turning around slowly, the Conductor came to face a smudged, fragmented figure, perhaps a few meters away from where he stood. At the outline of their figure, the void seemed to drop away into pitch black darkness, forming not a silhouette but rather an ink stain. The Conductor recognized them, hit with an almost painful pang of familiarity. They were the same smudged figure he’d seen in all of his lost memories. It hurt his head to stare at them for too long, and he ended up glancing away every now and again.

The Conductor attempted to walk towards them, but with every step he took forward, the figure seemed to move an equal distance away. Eventually, he stopped, standing and staring at the figure. He had so many questions. Where would he even start?

“Who are you?”

If it were possible, the figure seemed to tilt their head to the side a little. Then, they spoke: their words came out as a garbled, noisy mess that echoed and looped over itself again and again, becoming even louder and louder as it did so. The Conductor winced, hissing at the harsh noise and covering his ears. Eventually, the sound died out, and the two were left in silence once again.

Releasing his ears from his head, the Conductor stood up straight, staring at the figure once again. Shaken from the previous... _response_ he had gotten, but still confident that he could communicate with them somehow, he came upon his next question.

“Why did you leave?”

The ink blotch of a person before him seemed to freeze at that question. Their expression, though invisible in the figure’s fragmented state, was vivid in the Conductor’s mind: their face had twisted into something intensely sad and filled with longing. They let out a wail.

Their screams echoed throughout the void, striking the Conductor’s heart with heavy emotion. Unbearable sorrow. Longing for something better — not out of selfishness, but out of kindness. The heavy weight of hopelessness. 

The Conductor couldn’t handle it. He began to sob uncontrollably with the weight of the other’s emotions. Tears ran from his face, soaking his feathers as well as his coat. It didn’t take very long for his sobs to begin to hurt. His chest ached. Had he forgotten to breathe? He couldn’t, with the weight of the breakdown. He couldn’t breathe. He continued to sob. The wails of the figure continued to echo.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the wails fizzled away. Almost in sync, the Conductor’s sudden sorrow began to leave his chest, releasing him and allowing him to breathe at last. It still took him much longer than he’d have liked to recover, though.

As he stood up again, he saw that the figure hadn’t moved from where they previously were. It was almost unsettling how still they stood. Wiping his face, the Conductor, although still deeply shaken, gathered the courage to ask his next question.

“What did I mean to you?”

For a short moment there was a pause. And then the figure laughed. Though their laugh was warped and distorted, the Conductor could tell it was warm and carried good intention. His heart filled with happiness just as quickly as it had previously filled with sorrow, and he couldn’t help but smile. All kinds of emotions arrived with the warmth and happiness: low-burning admiration, calm compassion, and bright determination shone through as well. He looked up at the smudged figure before him, and they seemed to smile too. 

Even as the laughter faded, this time around, the feeling in the Conductor’s heart did not. Maybe it was because he hadn’t wished it away; instead, he kept it close in his heart. Cherishing the feeling.

“I—” he paused, laughing a little, “—I’m glad to hear that.” His smile faded slightly as he thought of his next question. When it hit him, some of the happiness in his heart was replaced by sadness.

“Will I ever be able to see you again?”

The figure seemed to think for a moment before speaking. Their voice carried no emotion this time, though, and their words blended together just like the first time. For a moment, the Conductor began to worry. What was the figure trying to communicate to him? However, the more he thought about it, the more it made sense that they were most likely trying to say that they didn’t know.

The Conductor frowned at that. He wasn’t sure either. He knew Hat Kid was trying to figure something out, but to travel across the universes?

He thought for a moment. “Were we friends?”

With every moment that passed, the Conductor became better at reading the figure’s emotions. Now, they seemed to bow their head.

Surprised and confused by this reaction from the figure, he became even more distressed when their emotions hit him. Sadness, almost like a soft tide, washed away the sands of happiness from his heart. It left a small fragment of hope in its wake, but nothing else. The Conductor felt distressed. This… wasn’t right. No, what? This didn’t make any sense at all! They _had_ to have been friends. Those memories brought him too much happiness to suggest otherwise. They _had_ to have been… right?

“What do you mean?” he asked the figure shakily. Their head remained bowed. “That’s impossible! How could we have not been friends when you mean so much to me?” The Conductor paused, momentarily surprised by the words that came out of his mouth.

The figure seemed to raise their head now to look at him. Their expression filled with sorrow quickly before without warning, pure noise filled the void.

Words layered upon warped words reverberated throughout the void, stacking upon each other to create the perfect mess. It was chaotic nonsense, to say the least. Somehow, this was the harshest sound that the void had ever produced, and the Conductor grabbed and pressed his ears flat into his head as hard as he could to attempt to block the noise. It hurt. Tears began to form at the edges of his vision.

He didn’t understand.

None of this made any sense.

The noise did not lose its volume, but it became clearer.

Slowly, he could make out a single word:

“You.”

The Conductor was startled awake.


End file.
